Black History Month - Jamaican cricketer Michael Holding

FEBRUARY 16
One who does not look ahead remains behind. (Brazil)

1954 – Jamaican cricketer Michael Holding was born


Michael Holding played schoolboy cricket – Sunlight Cup – on the Kingston College (KC) team in the early 1970s. In those days, I taught at Jamaica College (JC), KC’s traditional rival team at major sports. It was therefore no surprise when I learned in 1975 that selectors of the West Indies cricket team chose Holding to play test cricket in Australia. “He is just going along for the experience,” my source told me. “He probably won’t even play an actual Test match.

My source turned out to be wrong, as Holding had his Test debut and began showing his outstanding talent in that Australian series.

He was a natural athlete who might have been one of the great 400 metres runners had he not transferred his skills to the cricket pitch. He had one of the longest run-ups, and he also used his height (6’4½”) to good effect.

Holding was one of the fastest bowlers ever to play Test cricket; his quiet and deadly glide up the wicket led to his being called “Whispering Death”. Holding's 1981 over to Geoff Boycott at Kensington Oval was historic: five mesmerizing balls each one faster than the last with no runs scored, followed by a devastating ball that took Boycott’s wicket.



He was not equally brilliant as a batsman, but he nonetheless hit 36 sixes in his Test career.

On retirement from the game in 1987, he became an outstanding cricket commentator.


Also on this date in:

1874 - Frederick Douglass was elected president of Freedman's Bank and Trust.






1904 - James Baskett was born, He became Disney’s first live actor playing the part of Uncle Remus in Disney's "Song of the South" (1945. He was also the first male performer of African descent to receive an Oscar.











1923 - Bessie Smith made first recording for Columbia Records.




1956 - Singer James Ingram born in Akron, Ohio.




1957: Levar Burton, the actor most famous for his role as Kunta Kinte in the acclaimed television series "Roots" based on the Alex Haley novel of the same name was born.




1958: Rapper/ Actor Tracy Morrow, better known as Ice-T born in Newark, New Jersey. Ice-T, was born